


Know You Like the Back of My Hand

by imaginary_golux



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-20 21:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17630264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: For the February Ficlet Challenge prompt "Telepathy."Legolas and Gimli aren't actually telepathic...but they're pretty darn close.Beta by my darling Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	Know You Like the Back of My Hand

It isn’t actually telepathy, the way they move together, the way they anticipate each other’s words, the way they can predict each other’s actions so perfectly. It isn’t some odd magery which results in them breaking simultaneously into song and then immediately into laughter. It isn’t some gift of Gandalf or the Valar which lets them _know_ what the other will do before he even does it. No, it’s nothing so simple as telepathy at all. It’s _time_.

Years and years, for Legolas to learn Khuzdul, though he never loses his elven accent when he speaks the guttural dwarven words, for him to memorize the chants that tell the stories of Durin the Deathless and his people, the mining songs and the drinking songs and the songs of warriors preparing for battle. Years upon years again, for Gimli to learn Sindarin and Quenya both, to listen with endless patience to the whole long history of the elven people, their triumphs and their follies and their slow decline. Years wandering through the Jeweled Caverns side-by-side, as Gimli points out gems and limestone stalagmites and the way the water has worn away the stone to gleaming lace; years padding through Fangorn Forest, greeting ents with somber bows, as Legolas points out oak and ash and thorn and holly, names each plant and what its uses are.

Years of visiting Rohan and Gondor, watching Eomer grow old and grey while Legolas fails to age at all and Gimli only grows sturdier, as dwarves do, grows into the stone of his bloodline; watching Aragorn build Gondor up again, and Faramir and Eowyn raise a brood of wild children who become bold, clever, kind-eyed men and women. Years of traveling up to the Shire, when they can find the time, and admiring Sam’s growing horde of children, Pippin’s expansion of the Great Smials, Merry’s work with the Shirriffs. (Years of worrying over Frodo, who heals and does not heal.)

Years of learning each _other_ , the weight and scratch of Gimli’s beard, the curve of Legolas’s spine as he bends his bow, the strength of Gimli’s arms, the grace of Legolas’s dancing. Years of learning the quirks that even the great Quest did not quite reveal: the way Legolas sings softly to himself as he cooks, the words somehow shifting over the years from Sindarin laments to Khuzdul mining songs; the way Gimli forgets to pull on clothing when inspiration strikes him in the shower, and can be found at the forges or in the mines wearing nothing but a pair of boots and his splendid beard. The way Legolas likes to sleep curled up around Gimli as though the dwarf were a child’s toy, one hand knotted in Gimli’s hair; and the way Gimli tucks his cold toes against Legolas’s calves and chuckles when the elf squeaks with indignation.

So no, it isn’t telepathy when they finish each other’s sentences, when they break into song and then into laughter, when they move together in battle or dance or simple domesticity without words or even glances, _knowing_ where the other is without any effort at all.

It isn’t telepathy. It’s something far better: the long and well-lived years of love.


End file.
